1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there have been widely spread a service for registering an image shot in a studio or the like onto a server on the Internet to allow a customer to view the shot image from the customer's personal computer (PC) at home via, for example, the World Wide Web (Web), and a service for generating a photo book with use of the shot image.
The above-described services provide users with an extra value added to an image shot in a studio or an image on a server by, for example, applying image processing to the image or adding some effects to the image at the time of a display of the image. Examples of known conventional techniques for simplifying such an image processing work include a technique for allowing a user to select an area in an image and displaying a menu of the image processing to be applied to the selected area, thereby reducing user's time and effort required for the image processing (United States Patent Publication Application No. 2005/0278636).
There is discussed a technique for referring to information indicating whether processing such as face detection, red-eye detection, and a red-eye correction has been already applied to the image from an exchangeable image file format (Exif) tag of the image data, and applying the processing to the image if the image has not received the processing yet (United States Patent Publication Application No. 2008/0279427). Further, examples of known methods for effectively displaying a shot image include a technique for performing zooming/panning focusing on a face area, for example, when face areas or a face area and an in-focus area overlap with each other (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-080815).
An increase in the capacities of storage apparatuses in recent years has led to user's necessity of handling a large number of images, resulting in a growing demand for simplification of works for image processing. However, in the image processing method discussed in United States Patent Publication Application No. 2005/0278636, a user needs to select an area in an image to which image processing is applied, and therefore this method sill needs to be improved in terms of simplification of works for image processing.
The technique discussed in United States Patent Publication Application No. 2008/0279427 only applies a certain type of processing to an image if this processing is not yet applied to the image, and the applied processing is not necessarily the processing that a user wants to apply. The image display technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-080815 is subject to such an issue that, although this technique displays an image while prioritizing a face or an in-focus position in the image, such an area is not necessarily a valuable area. For example, for an image shot when a person closed his/her eyes or a person showed an undesired face, the user may rather want to avoid such processing that the face is especially emphasized.